Walk the floor at Web Summit without leaving your headphones. We sit down with Jo Smets, founder of BluePanda and president of the Portuguese Belgian Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, to unpack how nearshoring and AI are reshaping CRM, marketing, and team delivery across Europe.
We explore how nearshoring and AI come together to deliver faster, more human marketing and CRM outcomes, recorded live at Web Summit. We dig into trust, data governance, GEO vs SEO, dynamic content, and the leadership mindset that keeps teams human while scaling.
• What nearshoring means and why culture fit matters
• How Blue Panda applies AI across operations and client delivery
• Adoption patterns across startups and corporates
• The gap between AI hype and end‑to‑end process automation
• Balancing empathy, ethics and performance in teams
• Chambers and networks that bridge innovation across borders
• Communities as a marketing force and AI’s role
• GEO over SEO and the rise of AI‑proof websites
• Privacy, governance, and practical data safeguards
• Start small with AI, educate teams, measure results
AI dominates the headlines at major tech gatherings, but beneath the buzz a quieter shift is changing how European companies build, market, and scale: nearshoring paired with practical AI. Nearshoring brings teams closer in time zone and culture, cutting friction that often stalls offshore projects. That proximity matters when rolling out CRM, marketing automation, and data projects that demand quick feedback loops and shared context. The conversation traced misconceptions about nearshoring versus offshoring, why cultural fluency multiplies impact, and how leaders can blend human judgment with machine intelligence without losing their team’s identity or trust. The core message: modernize fast, but stay human, ethical, and transparent.
For delivery teams like BluePanda, AI is now a company-wide priority rather than a lab experiment. Recruitment, performance reviews, and internal operations get rethought with AI assistance, while client work focuses on stitching tools into outcomes, not demos. That means building a habit of scanning new tools, testing in small cycles, and choosing what integrates cleanly into existing workflows. Global partner networks such as BBN help spot trends early and compare adoption across markets, revealing a pattern: startups move fastest, corporates pilot more, and country differences matter less than company size and leadership appetite. The big missing piece many still seek is true process automation that spans functions, not just containerized point solutions.
Web3 CMO Stories Podcast
Trust and governance surfaced as the practical guardrails. Clients ask where data lives, who can see it, and how models learn. The advice is pragmatic: segment sensitive data, involve legal early, lean on EU AI Act guidance, and consider on‑prem or private options when needed, while recognizing trade‑offs. Teams can safely expose non-sensitive policies to LLMs to drive knowledge sharing without risking personal or financial data. Meanwhile, community building accelerates learning. Chambers of commerce and cross-border groups connect founders, marketers, and policymakers so knowledge flows where it is needed. Portugal’s startup energy, paired with Belgian and Luxembourg networks, shows how local hubs can punch above their weight when they share playbooks and host focused events on AI, defense, healthcare, and legal themes.
Marketing is undergoing a structural pivot: from SEO to GEO, as larger companies invest in geographic and contextual visibility beyond keyword rankings. “AI proof” becomes a new bar for websites as conversational engines answer queries directly. The forward-looking play is dynamic content: generate pages tailored to persona, intent, and freshness at load time, guided by prompts and guardrails, while keeping a backbone of evergreen assets like podcasts and research. Tool sprawl is real, so leaders should favor suites that consolidate AI capabilities for reliability, then add specialized apps where they create clear lift. The mindset that wins is open, experimental, and people-first. Start small: pick one workflow, measure, iterate, educate the team, and let early wins earn trust. In the end, technology amplifies culture; it doesn’t replace it. When leaders model empathy, transparency, and curiosity, AI becomes a lever for better work, faster learning, and stronger client outcomes.
Web3 CMO Stories Podcast with Jo Smets
Chapter Markers
- 0:00 Welcome And Guest Background
- 0:53 What Nearshoring Really Means
- 2:08 AI Everywhere At Web Summit
- 3:33 How Blue Panda Applies AI
- 5:16 Global Networks And Adoption Gaps
- 7:35 From Hype To Process Automation
- 9:14 Balancing Tech With Empathy
- 11:06 Chambers That Bridge Ecosystems
- 12:51 Communities, Marketing, And AI Demand
- 14:29 Start Small: Modernize Without Losing Soul
- 16:39 Surprises: GEO Over SEO And SaaS Futures
- 18:21 Tools, Consolidation, And Curation
